Vadodara, based Ekkay Magic India Pvt Ltd has developed a fraud prevention system, Courbar' to enable real time monitoring of any attempt made for fraudulent transactions from the customer's credit or debit cards, including the bank accounts.

The system is certified by the worldwide accepted ‘Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard', assembled by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC). The company has also obtained copyrights for the software in India and US.

The company developed this cell-phone technology based service after an extensive research extending for nearly two years. The software ensures that a transaction is done only after an accountholder gives confirmation from the cell phone.

Joiyesh Sampat, head of business operations, Ekkay Magic, said, "Once the bank buys this service from us, our automatic call centre will take care of the rest. Our software does not ask for sensitive data of customers. We only need mobile number, currency of transaction, amount of transactions and last two digit of credit or debit card."

Explaining the software, Sampat, said, "Software does not require additional hardware other than the system already used by the bank. This software is a single point service for all banking transactions that take place either through credit or debit cards or at ATMs as well as net banking and buying."

"So each time a card or account holder makes a transaction, Courbar service will initiate a validation of identity by generating a voice call. Based on the validation, the transaction is approved or rejected by the holder of the card or the account. The action is confirmed by a post-transaction SMS on card or account holder's cell phone, "he added.

Commenting on the deployment of service by the banking and financial services, Sampat, said, "We are in talks with all major private banks in the country with few of them showing willingness to adopt our software. Our product is a competent fraud detection system through which banks will be able to control e-commerce frauds to a large extent."

Established in 2001, Ekkay Magic is into the development of softwares and related IT services like Courbar, SMS IPO, EKKAY CRM, Localizer and Seletir.

Recently, the Reserve Bank of India, has issued a directive ‘Credit/Debit Card transactions-Security Issues and Risk mitigation measures' on February 18, under Section 18 of Payment and Settlement Systems Act 2007, asking the credit and debit card issuing banks with an aim to provide additional security measures for card transactions.